Evangelism Goodall 5

The main ideas from this information are that personal evangelism is important and every Christian should be involved in it. It may take some time and effort to learn and remember the lessons, but with practice, it becomes easier. It is important to understand that not everyone will listen or believe, but that should not discourage us. Our success is not based on whether the person we teach converts, but on our willingness to share the gospel. Personal work has advantages because anyone can do it, regardless of their abilities or intelligence. There are various ways to engage in personal evangelism, such as inviting people to your home, giving out tracts, using a tape library, etc. The key is to be involved and do what we can as children of God. But we've been talking about personal evangelism, and we need to discuss that, and save our night. And now, by hearing the lesson, you're able to view it, the three basic parts of it, to think about the Church as a result of fulfilled prophecy. That first part should take about 20 minutes, the second part about 15 minutes, and the third part that you heard this morning should take about 25 minutes, and those three. So we're talking about a range, if it is done well, somewhere around an hour and 20 minutes. And obviously, with the individual, that varies as to how long it takes and everything. And so, as a result, it can vary, and it's quicker, very rarely, for me, quicker. And what happens is, the more I tell it, the more I remember, and then you'll have it with you, and you won't have to worry about it, because you present this lesson two or three times. Somebody says, well, I don't think I could ever remember all that. Well, getting together that first time is what makes it hard to tell. But once you've done that, then you keep telling it, and the more you remember it, and then finally you'll find that you've gone to teach somebody, and it's taken you two hours. And you say, well, that's just too long. And you back up, and you try to restrict your thinking, and it takes that kind of discipline in order to do that. And to review just a little bit, to try to keep where we are, what we're talking about and everything. Really, what we're saying, in effect, is we're mentioning about personal work. We're interested in every Christian getting involved. This idea of teaching, exhorting, shining, admonishing, and everything, and personal evangelism is, of course, the leading people of Christ. And what my interest is, then, is to stir you up, is to find out what can we do, you know, and for you to try to figure out what you can do. And then, if it suits you, to try to do that the very best that you can. If it is teaching one of these series, fine. If it's doing some of those other things that we talked about, fine. But you need to find what you can do as a child of God. And so, in reality, we're talking about getting every individual in the Church to go after every creature, to go to every house, and everywhere, and to teach every member, and to develop. And that's our responsibility. And I really don't think there are any unimportant members in the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. I've seen some of the most people that think they had all kinds of problems, the very dear and good and could lead people, and I can cite some names of people that you know that are very limited as far as ability is concerned, but very effective as workers in the Church in doing those things which have to do with the kingdom of Christ. Now, the thing that we find is that when we talk to people about the gospel, we find that some people are not going to listen. And we need to understand that that is the case, that we need some encouragement with that. And so because of that, we find we go back to the Bible and look at Jesus. And we find that Jesus had those kind of problems, too. In John 12, we find in verse 38, he says, and the saying of Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled, which he spake, Lord, you have believed our report. And to whom hath the arm of the Lord been revealed? And the reaction is that as the Lord himself came in contact with people, the disciples, they came back to him and said, Lord, is this all? You know, is this just it? And Jesus spoke about the fact that there are some of these people that simply could not believe. They just couldn't bring themselves to believe. And so I have an encouragement for that, for the fact that I recognize the Lord himself had that kind of a problem, and not his problem, in fact, but I think the Lord was a complete success in doing everything that he was expected to do, that is, to teach people. Now, that's what I'm saying to you, that you can be a success, and I think that's important that you understand that. That we sometimes, I think, we get our priorities switched. For instance, over in 1 Corinthians chapter 3 and verse 6, Paul indicates what is involved in it. He says, I have planted a pious water that God gave the infant. Now, what's our responsibility? Our responsibility is the plant. Our responsibility is the water, and it is the Lord that gives the increase. Now, it sounds like when I say that, somebody says, well, you need to go out here and not have any increase, and that is not at all. But in order to get started, I've got to be able to whip some bears in order to realize that I can be a success, and really, I'm honest with you. I feel absolutely as successful when I have taught a person and he doesn't obey the gospel as I do when he obeys the gospel, if it's a good presentation. And the reason is that I have done what the Lord would have me to do in the Kingdom of Christ. I admit to you that I was a long time getting there. It took me a long time to feel that way. But I finally have gotten to where I am that way, that if I have that opportunity and that person has heard it, I feel good about that situation. And I think about Ezekiel, in Ezekiel 3. You remember, Ezekiel was sent to go to the lost sheep of Israel. And he was told before he would go, in verse 5 there, he says, I tell you, before you go, Israel is not going to listen to you. And he said, when you get finished, they're not going to listen to you. He said, and I'm not sending you a people of a strange speech and a different kind of thing. But he said, I can tell you, but I want you to go. And he tells you to be a watchman in Israel. And down in Ezekiel 3, about 18 through 20, right in that section, he gives four classifications or four levels of people. Who says matrices are not in the Bible, but they're a mathematical thing. But it's here, there's four levels that he speaks about. He speaks about the wicked and the righteous. He talks about two classes of the wicked. He said, now, if you go to the wicked and you teach him, he said, the fellow's not going to be saved, but you'll save yourself. But he said, if you don't warn the wicked, he said, not only are you going to be lost, but the fellow will be lost too. But he said, if you fail to go to the righteous man and teach him, he said, you'll be lost. And the righteous man will be lost. But he said, if you go to the righteous man and you teach him, then not only will you be saved because you taught him, but the man that you teach, he'll be saved because he repents the changes. Now, the point is that the fact that we're based on our success as to whether we make the presentation, not on the basis of whether the person makes the change. The conclusion of the whole thing is, in fact, in Ezekiel 2, verse 5, he says, And they, whether they hear or whether they forbear, for they are a rebellious house, yet shall they know that there hath been a prophet among them. That is, whenever it's said and done and everything is taken into consideration, whether they obey or whether they don't obey, they'll know that a man of God has been there. And that is the case, that if you learn your lesson and you teach it like you ought to, that person, whether he obeys the gospel of God, he'll know that he's heard the gospel of Jesus Christ. So for that reason, as I reflect on it, as I think about it, I really don't know that I've had a lot of failures. I've had some, and I can identify them. But the point is that I have been a success at what God has wanted me to do, and that's to teach the gospel of Jesus Christ. And a long time ago, my wife used to ask me when I'd come in in the evening, she'd ask me, Have you been successful? And I said, Sure. She'd look at my clothes and see if they were wet and whether I baptized the person. And the point was that I made to her is the fact that I was successful. And what God would have me do is teach that person how to be a Christian. And what I've done now, I've done what I want to do and what I need to do and what I'm responsible to do. That is, I've planted and I've watered. And that's up to the Lord to make the inference. And I need to make that statement in my own life to be pleased in the eyes of God. Well, we talk about personal work, but we talk about the things that are connected with personal work. And we need to understand that there are some things that are involved with personal work that have to do with reference to, as opposed to other things, as being having advantages. So let's look very briefly at personal work and its advantages. Well, the main advantages that it has is the fact that all can do it. You know, the average congregation only has a handful of people that are preachers. But yet you find that the person with the average intelligence, the average ability can do something. You may not be able to teach anybody, but you have a home and a place that people can be brought and can be taught. And you have people that you can invite to come and teach. You meet people at work and this kind of thing. You can give tracts and just all kinds of things. You can take, I noticed a tape library back there, just a tremendous tape library. And if somebody had a certain question, certainly you can take them a tape and just say, let's listen to this tape and talk about it whenever we get through. Just all kinds of things that you can do. And so all can do it. Everybody can be involved in it. Now, the reason I say this is because of this simple fact. You've got two ways to go. The only way this whole problem is going to be solved is in reality, as the passage we read from Matthew 18 in our scripture reading this evening, I mean this morning, except you be converted and become a little child, you'll not enter the kingdom of heaven. Peter Barrett told me some years ago, he said, Charlie, let me tell you, if you're going to get anything done in the church at all, you're going to find the ones that's converted, you're going to work with them. You're wasting your time with everybody else. Unless you find the people that are converted. And they're the people that's going to do it. The point is that what he was saying, in fact, and he didn't mean it the way that it came out there, but what he meant was, before you do anything with any of the rest of them, you're going to have to convert them first. And then you'll do something with them. Now, institutionalism, as we move to stage two that I spoke about earlier, stage two. Institutionalizing is that you get the people that are in the leadership role, and they try to institutionalize the situation where we can push out or extrapolate that we're all doing these things. In other words, try to organize and systematize everything so that the church does the things that need to be done for the congregation. And that won't work. It's synthetic, and when you get through, you're not doing anything, you're not satisfied, and you're just going and filling a pew and giving your money, and that's all you do at an institutional church. The other thing, the extreme of that, which the liberal congregations, who are the extreme of institutionalization, I don't believe the liberal congregations have a franchise on institutionalism. But the other extreme is the movement that's now going around the country among the liberal churches and the crossroads movement. A frightening thing. We've had it in the Tampa Bay area. This kind of thing is where they react to that and go to the other extreme and literally capture the people in a bondage type of situation, saying, look, if we can't do this for these people, we've got to get them and make them do it. So they take the model that Jesus chaining the apostles, you may not have read very much about disciples, but that's a big word now, all kinds of books, new book out every week on disciples. The model they say is that we must use Jesus the way he got the apostles. And so as Jesus got the apostles and trained them that that's what we need to do in the church today. That sounds great as you begin to talk about it. But they forget the fact that Jesus, as he took the twelve apostles, the twelve apostles were to be, were to bound on earth, would have been bound in heaven and loose on earth, which was to be loosed in heaven. And they were to sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. That was their position. And besides that, Jesus was God. And he took these twelve men and he literally took those men into his life. He made them turn everything loose. He said, let the dead bury the dead. He told them where to go and everywhere. And they followed him for three years. They left their nets, they left work, they left everything and they followed the Lord. And Jesus said he trained them as apostles. And people come along today and say that's what we need to do. And what they do, they'll pick a fellow like Larry Comfey and they'll pick another member that needs to be trained and they'll sign him as that fellow's prayer partner. And the statement is that, the inference is that that person needs to follow Larry Comfey like he follows Jesus Christ. And so he becomes coupled with them. They couple all the members in the congregation in this kind of coupling. And Larry will structure this fellow's day from five o'clock in the morning till ten o'clock at night, six days a week, and structure him in such a way. And the statement is that if you obey the Lord, you've got to do what I said. You get this fellow coming to confess his sins and all this kind of thing. And as a result of that, this person is such a guilt kind of thing that he does what he says. And let me tell you, that system will work. And in the book, The Master Plan of Evangelism by Robert Coleman, it says, don't wonder at what he says, the Communists use it. And the Communists do use it. It does work. Why, you can go from a congregation of 50 members to a congregation of five or six hundred members in about four years using this system. And it works. But again, it defeats the purpose of conversion. The person is structured to do this and to follow his leader. In the first place, Larry Coffey is not God. In the second place, the fellow that's being trained is not to be an apostle. That's not parallel at all. So discipling, as taught, is not the answer to the New Testament evangelism, even though it will work. It violates. But the point is, you've got to convert the people. And so if you're not doing what you ought to do as a child of God, to talk to your neighbor, to talk to people at work, simply, you just haven't been converted. Because that's what it takes to be the kind of child of God that you need to be in the kingdom of Jesus Christ. The nice thing about personal evangelism, it can be taught anywhere. Go anyplace. And you've got to be ready to do that. Just go anyplace. So as a result, I've gone all kinds of places. I've gone down to jail and talked people through the bars. Climbed the steps in these ghetto apartments, get up there and it's just as hot as it can be, and the termites crawling all over the Bible and the papers and that kind of thing, sweat pouring down, dripping on the paper. And, you know, you just find yourself in all kinds of places. Not like the church building with the carpet and the air conditioning and all that. You just run into all kinds of situations. You baptize people in all kinds of places. Baptized a fellow in the bathtub one time. Baptized a couple of people in therapy pools. And sometimes they'll be teaching somebody and they'll say, we've got the lake outside, but let's go out there. You just never know what kind of circumstances you'll find yourself in. It can be done any time. It doesn't matter where you're at. And what time it is. I guess I baptized probably four or five times the number of people at 11 o'clock at night than I baptized during service. Not that that's a good hour, but that's just about the time I wind up teaching my lesson, and like it's not, that's when they need to be baptized and that's when they want to be baptized. And the Philippian jailer was baptized there at midnight, and we have precedence on that. Not only that, but it reaches all classes of people. You just run into all kinds of people in your work. And I'll teach anybody. And that's what I'm supposed to do as a child of God. And this fellow, my idea, I'll teach him and let him decide what he's going to do. And I think it's wrong for us to decide whether somebody is going to hold out or whether they're going to turn out to amount to anything or whether they fit into a certain group that we have to be teaching in before we teach them. And the point is that even though I might realize this person is not a stable individual and his probabilities of doing this or doing that may not be the best in the world, what do I do? I teach him. And if he does what he wants to do, fine. He's a sorcerer. He didn't last 30 minutes, I don't guess, until he was ready for public confession. But what do I do? I teach him and baptize him. And he does decide what he's going to do as far as the kingdom of Christ is concerned. Some time ago, I had a fellow come to my door and wanted to study with me. And I studied with him. I went with him to my door. I met him someplace. And he had obeyed the gospel, and after he obeyed the gospel, he came to. I said, listen, I've got to tell you something. He said, I'm an escapee from the federal penitentiary in El Reno, Oklahoma. And I said, yeah. And we had a fellow in the congregation there who was the captain of the police force. And so we went down and found the United States Marshal. And he said, I've got to turn myself in. And he knew that. He went back to jail, and I heard from him last year. It's been five or six years now. He was with his wife and family. It's all already expected. But he went back, served his time, and went through the whole thing. So you run into all kinds of situations whenever you're talking with people. And so you need to ask that and realize that question. Will they hold out? I don't really know. John 6, verse 68, Simon Peter answered him and said, Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life. That was the answer to the question, Lord, to whom shall we go? I mean, will you also go away? And the answer, the reason that it had from that time, many of the disciples went back and walked no more with him. So a bunch of them went back. And evidently it just got down to the ones that were there. And he said, are you going to go away too? And he said, whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life. And so maybe that is the case that that happened. Sometimes back, people began to ask this, and I replied to it a little bit. But, you know, this kind of thing of holding out and continuing and everything. You know, some preachers rarely will not preach, or will not deal with it. And we were talking about that a little bit last night. I alluded to it, this thing of faith, facing rejection. That's a real problem, you know, dealing with that. Some people can't handle that. And some preachers, you know, unless the fellow will come to church, and by the fact that he comes to church, what kind of person is he? Well, I'll tell you the probability, just looking at the audience that's here, probability of the kind of person that comes to this congregation. He's going to be middle class. He's going to be white. He's going to have a pretty good financial standing. And he's going to have some degree of education, at least. Or at least has lived long enough that he's got that. And so there are several things. So the fact that he comes in the door of this building has really filtered a lot of probabilities, you know, of the large segment of society. And then you get into the fact that he's come here, and he comes to services here several times, and then he agrees to set up a five-week Bible study. And then if he completes the five-week Bible study, and then we say to him, will you be baptized? And he is baptized. What's the probability of that fellow, of continuing and being an upright and faithful member all his life? Well, I'll tell you what. It's a lot better than you go out here to somebody's house that you've never seen before, and knock on his door, or somebody you come in contact with that was pumping gas, and you go to his house and teach him, and teach him the gospel, and bring him in here and introduce him to everybody. Well, it's like fishing in a fish pond, under those kind of conditions. Now, somebody sometime back will ask me that specific question. I made a survey, and I really, if you've noticed, I try to stay away from what I have done. And I couldn't be here at all to talk to you about this if people had not taken what I've done and have done just a lot more with it than I've done. But nevertheless, in thinking about that, I did go back and look to see how many, somebody said, well, just how many of them continue that are taught like that? And one survey I made sometime back, at least four out of five. And that's as good as any, by any other method that you would look at, in effect. And so the thing is, we need to look and see what we're doing. And it reaches all classes of people, and we need to realize that. Not only that, but as we look at personal evangelism, it hits the mark. And I worry about that, talking about that last point a little bit, I worry about things that some people can do that other people can't do. We've got a fellow down in Tampa that made it big in selling soap. Made a tremendous margin selling soap. A popular product, some of you may know about it, but anyway. I'm not surprised. This fellow is a tremendously talented individual. No matter what he'd gone into, he'd have made it. It wouldn't have been soap, it would have been something else. I mean, he's that kind of individual. Anybody that knows him knows he has that kind of talent, and that's the case. But there are some people that come along and they've got something that they're working with and everything, and you say, well, you know, I know now one that works that way because it's you. And this is certainly not the case, because the fellows that have taken this and have used it have done much more with it than I have, in effect, even though I have done rather well with it. But it hits the mark. It's of such a nature that it does what it ought to do. You see, preaching in general, it's sort of a shotgun approach. I don't know who's here. You know, I know some of them. But I don't know what your state in salvation and all of that is concerned with. If I were invited here as a gospel preacher to preach, I'd get up a general sermon, maybe a lot like the one I just did, and I'd preach it. Sort of a shotgun kind of thing. But when I go to this fellow's house, I know, first of all, he's lost. And not only that, but there's no mistaking about whose men, because I'm looking right at him. In fact, I don't want anybody else there. And the prospect is brought face to face with his lost condition, that he can understand where he is and make that change and be the kind of child of God that he ought to be. Now, the best part about the whole thing is the fact that it works. And it works so well, this particular lesson, that it's scary. And it's good to have, even if you don't do anything else with it, from doing personal evangelism. Because already, if you think about the three parts, you've got three sermons ready at any time. And even though as comfortable as preachers I am, you know, after preaching several years, I have my Bible here. I've probably got 25 or 30 sermons, little marks in my Bible I can preach, you know, to be different. But to be honest, if someone wanted me to preach, I would need to look at that Bible a little while and get that sort of in my mind somewhat. It might not take long for some of them, maybe 15 or 20 minutes, maybe, you know. But I don't want to do that. But this lesson doesn't take that kind of warm-up. It's ready, any place or any time. Last year, I went down to the 12th Street bowling room, and I was on vacation, and I didn't want to preach. And I deliberately had left all my notes and everything at home, so I wouldn't preach. And so I was in Bible study, and one of the elders at 12th Street slid up beside me on the seat and said, Listen, we really want you to preach. So, you know, what I did, I went up there and did part of the lesson. And you can do that. And the fellows that have learned this lesson have found that kind of value out of it. One preacher up in Ohio that learned the lesson and all of that, he called me one day and he said, You know, Brother Goodall, he said, I went to Florida College and I went through all these courses and everything, but he said the thing that if I had to swap for the opportunities that's been open to me by learning that lesson, he said I wouldn't swap it for what I learned in those courses. I think he was exaggerating. He was exaggerating for what he meant in terms of his learning, what he knew and everything from that. But the point was that the lesson had been useful to him. And somebody going through the country some while back, they attended church where he preached, or where he was preaching in a meeting, and sure enough, they heard the lesson. So it worked to be useful like that, to have something to do and everything, not just leading people to Christ. But it works. I did a series in a congregation all that had been six or eight months ago. Had a fellow in the congregation there that just really wanted to get involved in personal evangelism. Never had done anything much. He had tried all the different systems and everything. And so finally, we were talking about the lesson. Well, I went through the various things about it and said that it would take 12 to 15 hours to work it out. And we were at the beginning of the series, sort of, and he came up to me afterward and he said, I tell you what, by the time you leave here, that I'm going to learn. I'm going to put those 12 hours in. I don't know where I'm going to get the 12 hours, but I'm going to learn that lesson. So he went to work right there during the series, learned the lesson, and put it together. And he went out the next week to try it. And first of all, he taught it until he was baptized. And you know, he went one, two, three, four, he baptized the first four people that he came in contact with. The congregation was flabbergasted. He was flabbergasted by the success that he had in that. That particular story, believe it or not, has been reported to me more times than I can remember of people that they learned. In fact, where the people have a problem with this lesson is when they finally learn it well enough that they begin to think they can leave part of it out. And whenever they start improvising, they say, well, you know, I don't think all the spirit parts are all that important, so I won't cover that. And I don't think all this church history business is worth anything, so I'll just pitch that out and I'll just do this and I'll do that. And when they do that, they quit converting people. But when they learn the lesson in tact, teach it just exactly like it is, there's not any part of it that needs to be let out. You need to tell the whole thing, because that's it, you know, as far as the telling and everything. One fellow I had down there in Tampa that came to train with me, I was running a preacher training class, and I take them through all these different kinds of things. I take them through, some fellow put out a filing system and I take them through that. And they got different, take them through the personal evangelism system and all kinds of different series and things, you know. I had them learn this lesson, one more lesson. And so the other five in the group learned the lesson. The other boy I talked about was in this group. And this fellow, I couldn't get him to learn the lesson, but he wanted to go away. He said, Brother Goodall, I said, let me go away. And I said, no, I said, you learn the lesson. Because I wanted him to learn it before he'd go away. He said, well, let me go away and hear you. And then after I hear you, then I'll learn it. And I said, no, it'll work that way. I guess that's the teacher in me coming out, you know. And so he just didn't learn it. I didn't say he wouldn't. So summer came. He went off, went to work and everything. And during the summer he learned the lesson. He came back the next fall and went to another congregation in town. I checked with him a while back. And during an over a two-year period, he had baptized 24 people. 24 people. And of course today, that's all he can talk about is the lesson. But, and these are people that are there. They're not people that were, somebody thinks, well, you know, these are people that are baptized. They went off. He's got a class going with all these people in the class. It's been almost three years now since this two-year period that I was talking about. They're in a training class where they're training to do personal evangelism and a large group of them and other people being led to Christ and carried off in a regular kind of way. To show you how these chains work, I had a fellow down there in Tampa that was both grew up in the church. And he just got away from the church and got out, got into various things and went to the University of South Florida and took some of their evolution classes, this kind of thing, and really just about lost his faith. And so his parents went to the church where I preached and so I went out to see him. And he told me, bug off. You know, he didn't want to mess with me. And so I went, I didn't quit going to see him. Went to see him two or three different times. And kept, even contact, get him to come back and everyone would come back. So, and in the meantime, he became a, a place where he was working. He was involved with his work and everything. And so he got in contact with one of his buddies. And they got involved in a, in a controversy about the Bible and everything. And so one Sunday afternoon, right after dinner, he called me. And he said, bug off. Can you come over to the house? Said, I've got this fellow and he's heard about my lesson. And he said, I want you to teach him your lesson. I said, fine. So I got in the car and went over there. I didn't know what I was getting into. But this fellow that he was talking to was as hard-nosed and argumentative and, and died of a war of Baptist. His daddy had been a deacon in the Baptist church and was just as determined with reference to Baptist doctrine as this fellow was with reference. And they got into one of these arguments, you know, about the Bible. And finally, my friend, the fellow I was telling you about, told him, said, look, you'll hear this fellow's lesson. He said, I won't talk to you about this again. So the fellow agreed to it. So he was praying, you know, when I got there. I didn't realize brethren get in all kinds of situations. So I walk in the door and there's a man and his wife there. It's pregnant and about ready to have a child. And they're sitting there. And so I woke up, sit down at the kitchen table and I go through the lesson. When I get through, the fellow looks over at me and he says, can I be in that time? And I said, why, sure. And my friend, the fellow there, he just sort of taken aback. And his wife, though, wasn't quite ready. I talked to her just a little bit. And she decided she wanted to be baptized. So I took them down to the building. Now, yeah, I was preaching somewhere else that night. And so I took them down to the building, baptized them, got back, got ready to go somewhere. So they told me that the couple that I was in their home, they came forward at services that night and were restored. And then after that, the next Tuesday, the lady, the wife of the man that had called me originally, came to me and said, well, I heard your lesson last week and I realize now that I really was not baptized for the mission of my son. That I didn't go down to the water lost without God and come up a new creature. That wasn't what I did at all. That was the wrong reason. And I need to be baptized. So I baptized her. I didn't know, though, that the second couple that I was talking about, that the fellow had a problem. And they were just as prompt as they could be. Different as they could be. And they got into discussion. And got crossed with each other. And then remember this other one now, he's still a Strong's Baptist now, and his brother's been converted. And they got just about the same impact that the other did. And said, hey, can you, I'll tell you what I'll do. If you'll let this preacher come and teach his lesson, he said, I won't bother with you anymore. So his brother said, fine. He said, I'll do it. So he comes over to the office and sits down there by himself. I go through the lesson, and when I get to the end, the fellow wants to be baptized. So I take him and baptize him. And he says, now wait a minute. He said, I'm, I'm my fiancee. Needs to be taught. And so he makes arrangements for me to go find his fiancee. And so I go find his fiancee, and we sit down, we go through the lesson with her, and she obeys the gospel. Now, the first couple that I talked about, the fellow has, came back to the church, became a deacon in the church, and is now preaching full-time the gospel. The second couple that I'm talking about has, has gotten to the point that he would, he could preach and do as well as anybody that you know that's preaching any place. He's that well-trained. He's that well-known. He teaches adult Bible class. He's preached on a number of occasions. The books that he has would, would cover from about the third bench down here all the way to the wall, and probably about two-thirds of the way up that wall. The books that he's collected, you know, and, and studied, and he's a diligent student of the Bible. His brother has preached on several occasions and will eventually, maybe be a preacher, and will eventually preach the gospel. But this kind of chain is the kind of chain that you see, and each of them have converted a number of people themselves, which shows the, the way that they reach out, and that's the way this whole thing goes, and that's the way it all works. Now, some of them take a while. I remember one lady that I taught. Her husband was sort of an unfaithful member. He would come when he felt like it. His daddy was a deacon, but, you know, out it goes, and he'd straggle in when he felt like it, and this sort of thing. Maybe he'd get there on Sunday morning for worship, and maybe he might not be back until next Sunday, you know. His wife wasn't a member. She was a strong Baptist, and so finally she agreed to let me teach her. It wasn't easy to set up the class. I went through the class with her, and when I finished, she said, oh, she was furious. She said, first place, she said, I misrepresented the Baptist church, that the Baptist teaching that they have was not like I said, and then in second place, she hadn't done what I said she had done. And I said, well, you just go talk to your Baptist preacher and see that, and see if that isn't what you did. If you didn't, you come back and tell me. So I just left her. In fact, everything went home. I didn't think any more about it. About six months later, she called. She said, could you study with me? And I said, yes, so I made an appointment, met with her, and I really had been through that lesson. I didn't want to go through it again. So I said, I started about what I did this morning, and went through that part of it, and as I went through it, began to make those arguments, she began to make them part of it. And she admitted that she had done exactly what I said she had done, and she just wasn't honest enough to accept it earlier. And not only that, but I correctly admitted to representing the Baptist church, and so she obeyed the gospel and baptized in Christ. I had another case where a fellow that was there, a black fellow, and one of our deacons, one of the finest men that you'll ever meet, but his wife was a member. And this is said to have encouraged all of those women that their husbands are not members. His wife, very, somebody wanted to know if she was the one that was outspoken. I said, no, she's not outspoken by anybody I know. But just a real vocal type of person. So he had had some teachings. And so, lots of people. And, but nevertheless, he was the kind of fellow that had a big family, and he would never let me talk to them. So I'd go to his house, and I'd hear the back door slamming. He'd go out, and I'd say, well, where is he? Well, he went to his family, you know. And just never had any contact with them. One day I, but his wife was always hunting up people for me to teach. And that's what I like. Brethren will get you at once, and we'll talk about that tonight. I want to get a nice lesson. Okay, so he, she would bring me this person. And so she was talking on the phone one day, trying to get me to set up to teach this lady that she knew. And her husband overheard and said, look, said, why don't you just bring them over here? She took a double take. So, why don't you come over here? So I went over to their house. The lady sat down at their kitchen table, and you see, I have an affinity for kitchen tables. But I sat down at the kitchen table and started teaching her and going through the lesson and everything. And this lady, she just didn't want it, you know. And that happened, you know. But it was a good, I felt good about the situation, you know. It was one of those success things. And so I packed everything up, went home and everything, and that was Tuesday night. Wednesday night, the fellow showed up at church, her husband. He was back in the living room. And we extended the invitation. And when the invitation came, he came forward, obeyed the gospel, and was knighted in the wall, faithful member of the church. He has season tickets to the Stamford Bay Bible. But when time comes for services, he sells them to somebody else. He's just that kind of devoted, faithful member in the church of the Lord. People asked, a year or so ago, out here, I think of one particular man and his daughter that I taught and had no idea that they would ever obey the gospel. And a couple of years later, somebody told me, said, hey, we baptized so-and-so, and they baptized these two people, and they said, you had taught them. You know, and they were going, so those kind of things just happened over and over again. Now, those are the kind of thing, and I could go on and on, and I know that my time is gone. But four or five more minutes, they tell me the 45 minutes will be up, and so I'll need to finish. But I do want to cover a couple more points. The first question is, who should I teach? Which one is a good prospect? Well, I'll tell you who a good prospect is. You won't have any problem with that. Brother Haley used to say that you've got different classifications. If you read his book, he says you've got all men of out of Christ. You've got those who are churched and those who are unchurched. And then you have to deal with that. Well, I'm not really sure that's a good way of classifying, but you've got to know Brother Haley to appreciate that. There are all kinds of people that you can teach, as you would look at a list like this and think about them. But one particular group there I want to discuss, every congregation has, almost, and this is one I used to really emphasize quite a bit, was come often built. Now, let me tell you about built. His wife's a member. They've got two of the biggest little kids you ever met, just as they could be. Built is just as fine a man as you'll ever want to meet. Good to his wife, good hard worker, good provider. He takes care of the kids. If there's a meeting, he's there every night at the meeting. And if there's a meeting, you invite the local preacher to come. He quite frequently feels like he needs to do something while he's in the meeting, so he'll ask the local preacher. He'll say, you know, is anybody ought to see? And, you know, the preacher tries to thank somebody. So he says, well, let's go see Built. So whoever it is, Harry Pickup Jr. or Robert Jackson or whoever it is, they go over and they talk to Built. And so they go through it. Built doesn't obey the gospel, but he keeps coming and he keeps inviting people to church even though he's not a member and people who are members don't come to the meetings. So, the point I'm making and that I made in the past is, that why do you mess with Built? This fellow Built has heard the gospel. You've taught the fellow Robert Jackson and taught him. Harry Pickup has taught him. All of these people have taught the gospel and have taught him. He's heard it from somebody. He's heard it from the pastor. Why waste your time with Built when he's heard it all of those times? For goodness sake, go out and teach the people that haven't heard it at all. Don't mess with Built. He's not a good prophet at all. I've done that just about that kind of strength. As you can tell the way I did that, my heart really wasn't in it until I did it at Merritt Island in Florida. And I didn't know if they had a built there. I went through the lesson on, instead of scheduling 10 o'clock on Saturday morning, they weren't as hardy as you folks are here. They did it on 3 o'clock Sunday afternoon. And 3 o'clock Sunday afternoon I went through my lesson. I went through the whole day. And when I finished the lesson, extended the invitation, Built came down the aisle and obeyed the gospel. I've been in a lot of emotional situations before, but I've never been in one as equal as that one. You could literally hear the sobbing. They loved the man in the audience. Jack Harvey preached there. Jack had got up to take his invitation and Jack broke down crying. He had to wait a while before he could take his invitation. I mean, take his confession until he could obey the gospel. You know, I didn't know if they had two built. And two weeks later the next one obeyed the gospel. So you never know who that is. But I'll tell you who your best prospect is. Your new converts friends. Those are the people. So if you convert people, you've got all kinds of prospects. No problem. You show me a congregation, you pass out a group of cards here, you wouldn't get a hand of that. Most likely, if this congregation lacked most of it, but I go do. And the reason is the brethren. They just don't know anybody. You convert somebody, he wants his mama's sake, he wants his daddy to obey the gospel. He can't wait until you get over there and teach his brother. He's got these three fellas at work that he wants to teach. One fella, one I taught some time back, he found a fella in a town a hundred miles away and wanted me to go over there and teach him. I said, look, they've got a preacher in the area. He said, no, I want you to go teach. I said, look, that fella there I know him. You know what? The man's house was back to back to the fella he wanted me to teach. I called this preacher. He went over and found the fella and taught him to baptize him. But you take this fella, he'll fund you to death wanting you to teach this one, teach that one. That's great. Those are the best prospects. And those are the people that obey the gospel. But the brethren in the church, they don't know anybody. You see, they don't have a mama that needs to be sent. They don't have a daddy that needs to obey the gospel. They don't have anybody they work with that needs to hear the truth. No place they go where they need supplies or anything, there's not anybody that needs it. And so the brethren are not any good when it comes to finding prospects. I'll tell you what, brethren, if we don't solve that problem, we're not going to do a thing in the First Avengers.